Reconciling Resilience and Sustainability in Overheating and Energy Performance Assessments of Non-domestic Buildings

Sustainability and resilience are generally acclaimed as favourable attributes of techno-socio-economic systems. However, they often encompass system characteristics that are not necessarily consistent. A manifestation of the concept of resilience in the built environment is overheating resilience, which is ever increasingly important given the rise in average global temperatures. A key sustainability objective, on the other hand, is building energy performance. In this paper, overheating risk and energy performance of non-domestic buildings are reviewed in the context of resilience and sustainability frameworks. Subsequently, different engineering approaches adopted to reconcile overheating resilience and energy sustainability along with their environmental outcomes are reviewed using the evidence gathered from two educational buildings in London. The results of this investigation along with other evidence available for nondomestic buildings have been used to develop a risk assessment framework that could help in achieving thermally resilient and energy efficient buildings.